Moments To Live For
by InfinitusX
Summary: And the hardest part of life is to live while you're alive. Four moments of quiet revelation, four unwritten songs to sing, four steps closer along the beaten path to the end. M/M


**Moments to Live For  
**

Genre: drama/gen

Characters/Pairing: M&M

Disclaimer: don't own

Warnings: made-up stuff, believability issues (duh), name spoilers (duh), ch.99/ep.35 spoilers (also duh), vague sex, implied lyrics throughout (if you're familiar with the songs; if not, don't worry about it)

Notes: I have no excuses for this shot-set. It was, really, a _ridiculous _thing to do because the band in question whose songs I borrowed is upbeat and optimistic and happy and catchy... and just... totally not at all something you would really think about associating with Death Note. Thankfully, you don't really have to know the songs to get the pieces. The songs were chosen deliberately and as such I made some attempt to make them part of the same storyline, even if there's huge time gaps.

Also. The last one? I know it's ridiculously improbable, but I would guess that in their altered timeline, global warming has had a greater effect on the climate of the eastern seaboard than it has in our own.... Yes. That is what it is...

Language/Style Note: Self-beta'ed. Third person, alternating perspectives.

-

Walk on the Moon

_I've got one shot and I'm taking it to you._

_-  
_

The bells in the church on the next lot were pealing loud and various into the sunlit air, the many-throated chorus a joyful clamour this morning. The bells were always what woke Matt up, and he lay in bed, utterly relaxed and boneless, listening, idly wondering if there was to be a wedding today, or if they had always been like this, and he had simply never noticed.

He didn't get up when he started to hear other kids in the hallway, moving around and talking, although normally he would be out there with them, talking and teasing and hiding in the crowd on the way to breakfast, a part of the group and not needing to be himself. He didn't get up when the voices faded away to nothing, disappearing down the hallway.

This morning he felt like himself, calm and decided and alive. All the stress of the previous months, of L dying, of having his course work jacked up to a frenetic speed, of comings and goings and being completely and utterly lost... that was all gone now.

Matt's decision had been made without him even being aware that he was making a decision until it was done, the way it often was. Sometimes he didn't even know for sure the reasons why he had made it until long afterwards. Something had happened to him that night; his subconscious often knew better than he did, plotted things out better, worked out the details. While L had been able to function well only without sleep, Matt's ability as a Wammy's boy would have been lost with insomnia. He'd woken up this morning with a Plan, one that he hadn't known he was making until it was sitting there, fully formed, in his head.

He stretched luxuriously, a smile slipping across his face, curling over and taking possession of his mouth, and sat up at last. His path before him lay clear and broad, leading to...

Leading to...?

He didn't know. He packed anyways, humming a catchy tune to himself, smiling without quite knowing why whenever he caught a glimpse of himself, the ridiculous little goggle-boy nerd, in his mirror, stretching almost reflexively in the sunbeams every time he crossed one. Matt just felt... good. It had been a long time.

He waved cheerily at a somewhat non-plussed Roger when he walked out that afternoon, backpack and duffel loading him down. Roger didn't know what he was trying to do; that much was clear from the look on his face as he stood by the door ushering the other kids in, and if he had, he would probably have tried to stop him. But Matt had a bounce and confidence in his step, and people were fooled by confidence, it was that simple; if you acted like you had the right to be where you were and do what you were doing, people would let you do it without a second's thought. That was one thing that Matt had learned well from dealing with Mello and Near over the years. Both of them were only kids, but because they were confident, because they knew exactly what they were doing and acted as though they had every right to do it, people listened. It was glorious. It was empowering. Matt wondered why he hadn't tried it sooner.

It worked on the train, even though it was a Monday morning and a fourteen year old kid should have been being asked why he was not in school. It worked in the airport, picking up tickets he'd never arranged and never paid for. Matt drifted halfway across the world on a cloud of confidence, smiling and easy, and doors fell open before him that before he would never even have seen. He was out, he was free, he was doing something - what, he wasn't sure, but it was something, at least.

It was so easy.

And when he realized what that something was, that purpose that had sent him across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, and back again, he was standing on the doorstep, and it was too late to turn back. The address that he had pursued deep into foreign and sometimes terrifying territory was on a piece of folded paper in his hand, it matched up to the address of the building before him, he was here, it was time. His opportunities had converged to this one point in time, and maybe it would be what he'd always been looking for, maybe it would be a disaster waiting to happen, but he'd taken his chances and this was his choice. He'd given up sitting things out long ago, now.

He walked in, and the pieces fell into place, neatly, at last, after months and months of not understanding.

Of course, of course. It had always been about this, hadn't it? Always been about him, and them, and reminding him that he was human, that he was closing doors he didn't know about with his single-mindedness. It had always been like this, falling, and catching, thought and intuition, black and white, an eternal balance, a friendship, a love, something remarkable and terrifying.

The enormity of the step he'd taken without even noticing slammed into him at full speed as he stood there, smiling nervously. _So this is what I was looking for_, Matt thought and it was the calm after the storm. He smiled, more broadly.

"Hey, you."

The stunned look on Mello's face was all he could have asked for.

-

Straight to Hell

_Heaven on Earth will have to do._

_-  
_

When Mello went missing for the third time in as many days, Matt just sighed and trudged out into the snowy afternoon, pretty sure he knew where his friend would be this time. For the third time in as many days, once he'd tracked him down, he leaned against the post of a streetlamp and lit up, breath mixing with the smoke, eyeing Mello coolly, waiting for him to be done with whatever mental issues he was wrestling with. He wondered when he'd turn around and notice him there. Or if tonight, he'd go in.

The stream of people parted and flowed around them both, ignorant of why they stood here in the cold, ignorant of the great church looming over the soot-stained streets. Matt waited, watched Mello's mouth moving silently, expelling white air like visible sin. Matt couldn't read his lips; too far away, and possibly in Latin, one of the few languages that he hadn't bothered to learn, because it was a dead tongue, and why keep bringing up the past?

The streetlight flickered on, and Matt pushed away from it, because enough was enough; they'd been standing here for hours.

"I thought you put that stuff behind you ages ago," he said, coming up beside his friend, and Mello shuddered, head tilted forward to hide his face, or more accurately, his scar.

"Doesn't change the fact that I'm a sinner," he said.

"Mello -" Matt put a hand on his friend's arm. "Forget it. What's happened, happened. Don't keep... worrying at it. You know? Come on, let's go back."

"I can't," Mello said. "The sin I'm thinking of hasn't even been committed yet."

"That's really pointless, then."

"You don't understand, Matt."

"No," Matt said, hunching his shoulders more deeply into his vest, "I don't. I never understood why you were so caught up with all this stuff. Right, wrong, that's all relative, it's not absolute. You're in this world, you do what you have to do to survive. That's it. You live to _live_, and nobody can say whether the little things led you in the right direction or not. The right direction is where you want to go. Nowhere else."

"But something has to be absolute," Mello said sharply. "There have to be absolutes, or the world would dissolve in chaos and anarchy. It's more than just surviving. I should have remembered, but I didn't. The truth is, I'm a sinner. I've killed people because they were in my way, not because they were threatening me. I've treated people like objects. I've done... a lot of things. And thought about doing more. You can't tell me that there's not something twisted and wrong about me, Matt. You would be lying."

"Whatever." Matt scuffed the sidewalk with his boot. "Look, are you done your... repentance or whatever yet? I'm fucking freezing."

"Matt," he said.

"You're not going to hell," Matt said, patiently, "and if you are, I'm going right along with you, got that? Maybe I haven't killed as many men as you have, maybe my 'sins' aren't as great as you think yours are, but if it exists, I'm going. OK? We go together, same as always."

"The thing is," Mello said, and stopped.

"What?"

"Never mind," snapped Mello, and brushed past him, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"The thing is that you don't think it will really be hell unless we're separated, is that it?"

Mello slowed to allow Matt to catch up, but he wouldn't meet his eyes. "Fuck you," he said.

"Do you want to be punished, Mel? I don't understand."

"You never do," Mello said.

"Mello," he said quietly, put a hand on his friend's arm. Mello snatched it away.

"Don't touch me."

"Whatever deal you've made between you and your God, or you and your Devil, that's your business. But later. Right now we're alive. We can't undo the past, and heaven or hell, those are future worries. What are you doing in this moment, Mello?"

"I don't know," Mello said.

"Neither do I," Matt said. "All you do is plan for possible futures."

"I can't help it."

"I know." This time when he gripped Mello's arm, Mello didn't pull away, but he looked miserable. "Mel, I don't want to lose you to something that hasn't happened yet. What are you doing, in this moment?"

"Something that would send me straight to hell, if I wasn't already headed there," Mello said.

"I meant other than the Kira thing."

"So did I," said Mello, and yanked Matt to a stop. He saw Matt's eyes widening behind the goggles. He'd forgotten what colour they were. That didn't matter. Matt's breath was warm against the ice of his face, pulse rapid under his fingers. His mouth was warmer still, like coming inside on a day like this and wrapping up in a blanket, watching the snow fall. Matt tasted like ashes and home, destruction-acceptance, bittersweet like the knowledge that ran through Mello's veins.

The crowd flowed around them, unseeing as always, and Matt's hands came up to cup Mello's face in his hands, thawing out from his surprise with unexpected grace and acceptance.

"I was kind of waiting for you to do something like that," Matt said at last.

"Shut up," Mello said, and spoke the truth of his thoughts on sin. "If I'm falling anyways -"

" - You want to make this as good as it can get while we still have it."

"Yeah."

Matt understood. Matt always understood, even when he claimed not to.

"... Sounds good to me."

-

Love Me Tonight

_The simple surrender just in time._

_-  
_

It was very late. Outside sirens howled by, and traffic rumbled, and snow fell, silently. Inside, the clock ticked its steady heartbeat pace. Sheets rustled, slightly louder than the evening breathes of the two lying on their backs, side by side, in the bed. It was so dark in the room that almost nothing could be seen.

"... Mello?"

"What?"

"I really am falling with you."

".... I'm sorry." Shifting on the bed, a slight hitch in his breathing. "I'm really sorry."

"Don't be."

It was too dark to see, but feeling was uninhibited. Matt moved closer to Mello again, feeling the warmth radiating from his skin, trailing absent, gentle fingers up and down his bare side. "I'm glad, you know."

"I don't know why you would be." Mello's voice was rough and annoyed, sharp with badly hidden emotion stretched as taut as a wire.

"Because I've... wanted that for a long time," Matt said, felt Mello still under his touch.

"Why?" Demanding. A challenge. Typical Mello, typical response, always needing to know more, never just accepting and going with the flow.

It had taken far too long to catch up, to catch him - they were two different things - to catch up and to catch him - and Matt hated it, that it was only now, just before an end that he could distantly sense in Mello's words, that they were finally reaching an understanding of sorts, that maybe they would have been OK, if they had been anywhere else, if they'd been anyone else.

They weren't.

Matt had drifted alone, across the majority of the world, for years now. He wanted to touch down now, for awhile, to be grounded with the one other person in his life who needed an anchor, someone to listen and care as much as he did for them, to hold each other to the bottom and bring some semblance of sense back to life.

"Because you're all I've got," he said into the dark, simply, matter-of-factly, not bothering to either lower or raise his voice. Mello's grip on the hand over his waist tightened, and that was all, until Matt felt his breath against his lips once again, and then Mello was kissing him, dragging him in, possessing, needing, and Matt kissed back, loving him with every fibre in him.

Mello had always thought they were going to hell; Matt had never believed in it. His belief was in Mello, Mello's power, his emotion, his everything. He hoped that Mello could tell, through the kiss, what he meant. To say it aloud was to risk breaking whatever barrier had resided between them for years, to break down all of Matt's walls just to blurt out what he wanted to. It would mean giving in and admitting the truth that Mello would never want to hear - that by themselves, they didn't mean anything, that it was only together that they were themselves, that there was emptiness when they could not be side by side. Not a mental lack - oh no, if that were true Mello would have been dead long before now - and not exactly a physical lack either. Just - an emptiness.

He thought it, even if he couldn't say it. He wondered if Mello loved him back. After all, according to the religion that Mello had tried so hard to abandon, what they'd done tonight was a sin. Surely, even if he was desperate for contact, he could have found someone else. There had to be a reason why he'd let it be Matt, didn't there? Not just desperation, not just being scared of what was beyond his control. Mello was control.

Matt tasted... salt, ruining the taste of chocolate and Mello, and maybe he was right, Mello did care, if what he'd said had made him shed tears.

"I love you." Matt said it quietly, even though he hadn't meant to, and it sat in the silence between them like a cat, wayward and potential. His heart lodged itself simultaneously in his throat and in his stomach.

Silence. The rustling of sheets, Mello pulling away, and Matt felt sick for a long, long moment.

"Get to sleep," Mello said, and Matt couldn't tell if he'd ruined anything from his tone - it was guarded, and tired, nothing more, both to be rather expected at three in the morning.

He half-expected Mello not to be there in the morning, but he was, lying curled around himself like a kid or an animal, back to him, but there.

Maybe -

-

_Only an hour before they left, they were waiting, waiting, waiting, silent and tense and half-angry with each other for allowing it to go this far, and Mello snapped. _

_"All right, I've fucking had it."_

_Pushed Matt back onto his back on the couch, kissing, grinding, caressing, clothes sliding off like water, and Matt couldn't be angry any more with Mello clawing into him with everything he had, it wasn't possible when Mello was being like this, harsh and gentle and _needing._ He clawed back, trying to be as close as humanly possible, closer, closer, because damn it, he still loved Mello and this wasn't fair, he was going to die and then there would always be that emptiness inside of him. _

_It occurred to him that maybe this wasn't all that he could do, after, and he smiled wistfully into Mello's hair, where it couldn't be seen._

_Only a few seconds before they were to walk out the door. Matt was silent, hidden behind his goggles._

_Mello caught his arm just before he walked out, pulled him back and around for one more kiss, surprisingly soft._

_"Be careful out there," he snapped, and his eyes dropped. "...Love you," he muttered, so low that Matt could barely hear him. _

_He was gone before Matt could stop him and say it back._

_-_

Maybe that was a future that would never happen. And maybe, maybe, it was.

-

Here & Now

_It's the moment that we live for and we just can't live without.  
_

_-  
_

The windows of the car were rolled down, and chill sea air blasted in their faces as they rolled down the coastal interstate as a sliver of sun peeked over the bluing horizon. Light glittered off the grey waves sweeping into shore, and the cry of the seagulls could barely be heard above the music blasting from the car's speakers.

"Roll up the fucking windows," said Mello, hiding a shiver.

"Put on some real clothes," Matt retorted, blowing smoke out in a stream towards the open driver's window. "Chill, man, we're almost there."

"I'm already chilled, moron," Mello grouched, slouching in his seat. "Give me your jacket."

"Backseat," Matt said, and drove on as Mello unbuckled himself and bent awkwardly around the seat, rummaging for Matt's discarded jacket.

"So where are we going and why exactly are we going there?" Mello slouched back into position behind his seatbelt, now wrapped in Matt's oversized fuzzy tan coat and looking as though he was seriously reconsidering Matt's sanity. "We had things to do today, you know."

"No we didn't," Matt said, and drove on.

"Important things that can't be put off for some asinine morning trip on the first whim that floats through your goddamn head. Christ, what time is it? It's got to be... what, five in the morning?"

"Try seven," Matt said. "And stop whining. I told you. This is important."

"We're supposed to be packing to go to Japan. Or rather, you are, I've been packed for ages. Except you have to fucking drag me out of bed at fucking five in the morning when it's freezing and careen off on some stupid adventure."

Matt pulled over so abruptly that for a second that for a moment Mello was astonished, wondered if he'd been pushing the friendly bitching too far, if Matt had actually Had Enough. But Matt was unbuckling his seatbelt, bounding out the door, and there was a lightness in his steps that didn't speak of anger at all. The wind ruffled his hair, dull in the pre-dawn light, and it wasn't fair that he didn't look cold at _all_ as he yanked Mello's door open, held out a hand.

"Come on," he said.

Mello ignored the hand, but got out anyways, stretching out the kinks in his muscles before staring down the rocks to the water at a bit of coast that looked exactly like every other piece of coast they'd driven by for the last hour or so.

Matt was bounding down the rocks like... like some kind of goat, or an excitable small child, awkward and ridiculous. Mello could hear the occasional deep hacking cough that his friend let out even from up here, felt a stab of worry that he would never admit to (because that was a sick kind of cough, because Matt had never to this day caught a cold in his life, because it wasn't a cold, because that cough meant that Mello was that much closer to losing him), and followed, reluctantly and considerably more carefully.

"Come on!" Matt yelled again, from down near the water, and Mello scowled, kept coming at exactly the same rate as before. When he caught up, Matt frowned at him. "I thought you were gonna miss it."

"Miss what?" Mello said, no more impressed now than he had been from the moment this little expedition had started.

"That," Matt said, and swept out one arm, grandiosely, at the sun creeping over the horizon, slowly tinting the sky with yellow and pink and steely pastel blue. The waves glittered brighter. Down here the seagulls were audible, swooping across their field of vision, and bits of seaweed thrust up on the rock during the high tide of the night gleamed like stained glass in the light of the rising sun. Everything was still; just the waves, and the seagulls, and their breathing, and distantly the sound of cars rushing by on the highway.

"Since when did you care about sunrises?" Mello demanded.

"Since now. I've never actually seen one before," Matt said. "I'd always fall asleep after staying up all night waiting for it to come."

"Stupid," Mello said. And then, "Wait, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Matt was pulling off his shirt, discarding it on the rocks to reveal a wide and slightly nutty grin. "Know what else I've never done?"

"If it involves you taking any more clothing off than you already have, I'm not sure I want to kn - ugh, seriously, Matt, what the _fuck?_"

Matt was all but naked now, standing beside Mello in the rising light, shivering just a little in the light breeze.

"I've never gone swimming in the ocean in January!" he yelled, and then he was running down the rocks, and diving - actually _diving_ - into the freezing cold Atlantic and was he freaking _insane?_ Had aliens finally taken over his brain, as he'd always claimed they might, and what had happened to the quiet, easygoing, sensible Matt that he'd known his whole life?

It felt like an eternity before he saw Matt surface, just off from the rocks about fifty feet or so, treading water and grinning like a madman.

"Holy fucking _shit_, that's cold!" he yelled. "Whooo!"

"Matt, what the _hell?!"_

"Come on, Mel! You come too!"

"Are you insane?!" Mello screeched.

"Mellooo, just do it! Come on! What if I was drowning, you wouldn't just stand there and let me, would you?"

"The hell I would! I'm not going in!"

"Don't you know what it's like to feel alive?" Matt yelled, and porpoised under the water.

"Matt? Idiot, you're going to kill yourself - what are you doing?"

Silence.

"... Matt?"

Silence. Seagulls crying on the icy air, but otherwise, silence.

Electricity jolted through him, and he couldn't get his pants or his boots off fast enough, but vest and jacket cascaded off, flung unceremoniously to the ground, and it was _freezing_, and that was because this was the _Atlantic Ocean_ in fucking _January_, there was goddamn ice on those rocks near the edge, and Matt had voluntarily gone swimming, the unathletic little _bitch,_ and then he too was in the water.

It was like adrenaline was coursing through him and around him, surrounding his skin in terrifying swooping sensations, and Matt was right, this was fucking incredible, this was being alive, every skin cell screaming with protesting sensory overload, every nerve going off in fireworks, and his muscles were going to lock up if he didn't get to his goddamn hacker _right now._

"Matt, you fucking pansy!"

"Yeah, but I got you into the water."

Mello spun around in the water, startled. Matt was shaking himself off on a rock much closer to shore, his wet red hair matching almost exactly the colour of the seaweed floating around the base of it, but Mello was seeing more red than just that.

"I'll kill you myself," he vowed through clenched, chattering teeth, and pulled for shore in strong strokes, hampered by his heavy boots.

Matt helped him up, even though Mello tried to ignore the hand; he was too cold to make it up by himself, shaking and shivering so badly that he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop. Matt was shivering badly too, but he helped Mello peel off his waterlogged boots and pants, handed him his jacket to pat himself dry with.

"I'll kill you," Mello said again, collapsed on the rocks, which were only slightly warmer than the rest of his current environment. At least there wasn't snow.

"There's blankets up in the car," Matt said, crouching beside his collapsed friend, still dripping and apparently beyond caring. "Wasn't that something?"

"Something I could kill you for. What were you thinking, that a case of hypothermia sounded like a good way to start off your week?"

"I just wanted to do something different," Matt said. "To drive with the windows down and the music blaring with my best friend by my side, and for the moment not a care in the world. To just do things for the sake of doing them, you know? To try something I've never done before, because there's so many of them and I'm not getting any younger. That's what I was thinking, Mello."

"You're crazy," Mello said again, shivering and gathering his now-ruined pants to him with the rest of his clothes.

"Not as crazy as you," Matt said, "although together we might get arrested for public indecency if we go back up to the car at the wrong moment." He stole the jacket back from Mello and started scrubbing himself dry. Mello shivered again in the cold morning air.

"I don't get you sometimes," he said, getting to his feet.

"Sometimes you just have to stop and look," Matt said. "As hard as you can. And then things get a little clearer, you know?"

Mello looked. At the pastel and steel world around them, alien and free and wide, wide open. At Matt, shaking the last bit of water from his hair, drops flying and catching the light, like tiny falling stars, hair almost dry now and burning with an auburn halo, the brightest thing in this pale strange world, skin still damp and silvery like a fish's skin, little drops of water collecting in the hollows and curves of his body. He breathed, watching skin ripple over moving muscle, shifting bones, stretching tendons, the delicate interplay of all the parts that made up the whole, felt his anger drifting away with the next breath of breeze, frozen out of him by the chill.

Something in him ached, and he thought, without meaning to: _Matt. You fragile, complex mess of intelligent flesh and blood, you fallible, breakable, __human_.

He didn't know what it meant. Or rather, he did, but it frightened him, to remember. It was so easy to snuff out a life, so many little things that could interrupt the delicate cycle of biological processes and spill a human's life like so much water from a tipped jug. So easy, and criminals, and people who stood in Mello's way - they weren't the only ones who could die without a moment's notice.

The tide in him had shifted like the ocean's had, hours before, turning and flooding through him with some thought, or feeling, or - something - that was impossible to put into words. And it was morning, bleak as it was, and now was the time when the last rays of innocent light filled the world before jaded day came, and went, and night fell once again. Now was... now was the time. A time. The only one that mattered, at this moment.

"Yeah, I think I do," he said at last. And when he pulled Matt against him there was warmth mixed in with the ice of their skin touching. His nerves were prickling with a different kind of fire now, of warmth, of life, and Matt slipped his hands down over Mello's bare hips, holding him close. His mouth burned against Mello's with an almost feverish heat in relation to the January morning.

"See," said Matt at last.

"So maybe you have a point," Mello conceded. "Now pick up your clothes, you dirty little nudist, and let's get back to the car."

-


End file.
